The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 10

by Unknown

CHAPTER X. THE LAST OF THE SPANISH HABSBURGS

[1598-1700 A.D.]

The two preceding reigns, being by far the most important in the modern history of Spain, have commanded a corresponding share of our attention. But as with Philip II ends the greatness of the kingdom, which from that period declined with fearful rapidity,—as in the present chapter little remains to be recorded beyond the reign of worthless favourites, the profligacy of courts, and the deplorable weakness of government,—the journey before us will be speedily performed.

The first courtier to whom the destinies of the peninsula were confided, was the duke of Lerma; but as he had no talents either for peace or war, the burden of administration devolved on a needy adventurer, Rodrigo Calderon, one of his pages. In his domestic policy—if profligate imbecility deserve the name—the most signal circumstance is the expulsion of the Moriscos from Valencia, Andalusia, New Castile, and Granada. During and after their late rebellion, those baptised infidels were transported from the last-named kingdom, and dispersed among the Christian inhabitants of the countries adjoining. Tranquillity could scarcely be hoped from so arbitrary a measure; the Moriscos felt that they had been treated with equal perfidy and cruelty, and they thirsted for revenge. They accordingly renewed their correspondence with the African princes and the grand seignior, whom they continually urged to invade the peninsula, and in whose favour they promised to rise on the first signal. Though they were compelled to attend mass, they sought in secret ample amends for the violation of conscience, by observing the rites of their own religion, and by heaping insult on that which they had been constrained to honour with their lips.

The new king, Philip III, observed that he would rather be without subjects than rule over infidels: the foolish saying was applauded by the courtiers; and orders, dated September, 1609, were despatched to the captains-general to force the Moriscos on board the galleys prepared for them, and land them on the African coast. Those of Valencia, 150,000 in number, were first expelled; they were followed, though not without great opposition, nor in some places without open resistance, by their brethren of the other provinces. In the whole, no fewer than 600,000 were thus forcibly driven from their ancient habitations, omitting the mention of such as, by assuming the disguise of Christians, spread over Catalonia and southern France, and of the still greater number of children, who, being born from Moriscos and hereditary Christians, were suffered to remain. Those who disembarked in Africa were treated with characteristic inhumanity.

In 1618, the duke of Lerma was disgraced, and the real minister, Don Rodrigo Calderon, who had been adorned with numerous titles, was imprisoned. Subsequently he was tortured, tried, and sentenced to death; but, before the sentence could be put into execution, the king died. Philip IV, however, ordered him to the block. The removal of the duke only made way for another as imbecile and worthless as himself. So that the king was not troubled with state business, but allowed to have his women and his diversions, to provide for mistresses and parasites, he cared not who held the post of minister.

The foreign transactions of this reign are too unimportant to be detailed. In revenge for the maritime hostilities of the English, an expedition was sent to Ireland to raise the inhabitants against the government; but it was annihilated at Kinsale. In the Low Countries the war continued with little glory to the archduke Albert until 1609, when the independence of the Seven United Provinces was acknowledged by treaty. With France there was continued peace, which, in 1612, was strengthened by the double marriage of the prince of the Asturias with Isabella de Bourbon, and of Louis XIII with the infanta Anne [Anne of Austria], eldest daughter of the Spanish monarch. With the Venetians, Turks, and Moors of Africa there were some engagements, but nothing decisive was the result. Spain still retained the duchy of Milan, the kingdom of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, and the fortresses on the African coast.

Philip died March 31st, 1621. Besides his heir, and Anne, queen of France, he left children—Maria, queen of Hungary, Don Carlos and Don Ferdinand, who entered the church, and attained the dignity of cardinal. His character needs no description: it was chiefly distinguished for helpless imbecility, for dissipation, and idleness.[c]

CAUSES OF SPAIN’S RAPID DECLINE

[1598-1621 A.D.]

The rapid conquest of the Palatinate by the Spanish army, under the marquis Spinola, and the decisive battle of Prague, which the emperor gained by means of the treasures of Spain, brightened the last days of Philip III with a transient lustre. But the constitutional melancholy inherent in the Castilian line—the taint of the blood of Juana—predominated over all the excitement of victory and its exhilarating consequences. The gloom which had overcast the mind of the king could not be dispelled by the most brilliant successes; and those triumphs which, towards the close of his reign, diffused universal joy throughout Spain, conveyed no gladness to the breast of its desponding monarch.

At the accession of Philip IV, the Spanish monarchy had much declined from that supremacy which it had so long held among the nations. Its territory indeed was but little diminished, and if power could be measured by extent of dominion, Spain was still the most potent kingdom in Europe. But its energy was in a great measure spent, and its resources were nearly drained.

In every country there is an epoch of exhaustion as well as of excitement; and in the political constitution, not less than in the bodily frame, the period of depression quickly follows on that of excitation. The growth of the Spanish monarchy had been rapid and gigantic—more so, perhaps, than that of any sovereignty, except the Grecian Empire of Alexander. But its sudden increase of power had been somewhat forced and premature. It was produced by the matrimonial alliances of its sovereigns, by accidental discoveries which opened as if by miracle the gates of dominion, and by the pre-eminent talents of a few individuals, who, within a short compass of time, rose in constellation on Spain—Ferdinand the Catholic, with his illustrious queen Isabella, Gonsalvo de Cordova, Cardinal Ximenes, and the emperor Charles. Its progress in power was not accompanied by a corresponding expansion of intellect, or advancement in knowledge. The time of its supremacy was consequently brief, and the decay which it suffered during the short reign of Philip III was more swift than any recorded in the history of the decline or fall of empires.

But though Spain had thus sunk in the space of a few years, the causes of its depression may be traced through a much longer period, and may even be found in the era of its augmentation and prosperity. Spain had not enjoyed but abused her strength; and if the maxim be just, that an immeasurable ambition is the ruin of nations, never was country better entitled to destruction. As early as the reign of Charles V, the kingdom had been emptied both of men and treasure to support foreign wars.

The discovery of America and its mines ought naturally to have given fresh vigour to industry and commerce; and it undoubtedly promoted them for a time. But, borne away by political events, energy was diverted from domestic industry, the truest source of national wealth and greatness, to foreign colonisation and adventure. The discovery of treasures which they believed to be inexhaustible, and the example of immense and rapid fortunes acquired in America and the Indies, produced a contempt of tillage, and even for the manufactures, the profits of which were comparatively inconsiderable and distant. Persons, too, of a certain rank and birth, however poor they might be, were precluded by the prevailing notions from procuring a subsistence by the exercise of the mechanic arts. But in the New World they could, without shame, devote themselves to pursuits which in their own country might not be prosecuted without degradation. Nor did the produce of the mines afford any compensation for the injury they thus occasioned. Expended in chimerical projects of foreign ambition, and schemes to destroy the peace of other nations, the tide of wealth which flowed from the western world into Spain rushed through the land like a torrent, without fertilising it.

The extent, too, of the Spanish empire, and the distance of its various dependencies, was another cause of its decline. In all ages, the ruins of empires have bespoken the evils of overgrown dominion. The improvement of remote possessions is never sufficiently attended to, while on their account the interests of the parent state are frequently neglected. Voiture[e] likens the Spanish monarchy to an enormous and unwieldy vessel, of which the prow was in the Atlantic, and the stern in the Indian Ocean. All the vice-royalties suffered by the inevitable abuses of delegated authority, and were seldom vivified by the presence of their princes. The whole life, indeed, of Charles V had been a continued journey; but the Escorial was the fit habitation of his son, and Philip enjoined to his successors a constant residence in Spain. All the proceedings at Madrid were dilatory, and no provision was ever made for any event which seemed to be at a tolerable distance. Others followed the example of the court, and delay became the sole policy of the prince, the ministry, and the governors of provinces. Whatever institutions were favourable to liberty had been suppressed or undermined in the reign of Charles V, and freedom was at length utterly destroyed by his despotic and bigoted son.

Nothing, however, impresses us more strongly with a conviction of the indolence and torpor of the Spanish race, than that the expulsion of the Moors should have been attended by the fatal consequences which it unquestionably produced. Elsewhere it would have occasioned no loss or disadvantage, or would have been followed only by such temporary inconvenience as ensued in France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But even from the time of the ancient Celtiberians, the inhabitants of this peninsula had been disinclined to labour, and indisposed to every species of exertion, except in war. “The peasants,” says Madame d’Aulnoy[d] (who travelled in Spain in the middle of the seventeenth century), “will more willingly endure hunger and all severities of life, than work, as they tell you, like mercenaries and slaves. Thus pride, seconded by sloth, prevents them from tilling and sowing their land, which remains uncultivated, unless some more laborious and worldly-minded strangers undertake the task, and thus carry off the gains, while the sorry peasant sits in his chair, thrumming an ill-tuned guitar, or reading some mouldy romance.”

Voiture,[e] who resided for some time at Madrid, shortly after the accession of Philip IV, and travelled to the south of Spain with letters of recommendation from Olivares, exhibits an amusing and graphic picture of the indolence prevailing among the lower classes of the inhabitants. “If it rains, the villagers who bring the bread to Madrid do not come, though they could get a better price. When wheat is dear in Andalusia, and they have it in Castile, nobody takes the trouble to send it or to get it. It must be brought from France or elsewhere.”

Among all ranks celibacy prevailed in an unusual degree. Besides seclusion in convents and nunneries, many obstacles arose to matrimony from family pride and the disagreements of parents. Marriages were thus contracted from interest, without choice, affection, or desire. From these causes, and from early debauchery, the population was more disproportioned to the means of subsistence than in any other country of Europe; and hence the means for defence and for the acquisition of wealth were diminished. The education of the children, such as they were, of these enforced marriages, was shamefully neglected among the highest classes, and indeed even in the royal family.

The riches of the church were totally disproportioned to those of the rest of the nation, and much wealth was thus locked up in silver images or golden lamps, which, if judiciously brought into commerce, might have rendered many thousands of the population opulent and happy. Equally large were the encroachments which superstition made on the time of the inhabitants, great part of which was withdrawn from useful labour by religious festivals, masses, processions, and purchase of pardons.

It was thus that Spain, which, of all the countries of Europe, possessed the greatest advantages in climate, fertility, and geographical position, became, in spite of these means of national prosperity, the poorest land in Christendom. The gifts of nature were all in profusion still, but human institutions had corrupted its benefits, or perverted them into sources of weakness and decay. When the Spanish government perceived the diminution of coin resulting from these causes, it attempted to supply the deficiency, by imposing higher taxes on manufacturers and artificers. But the burden became intolerable to the few remaining workmen. They fled to Italy and Flanders, or, if they stayed at home, they relinquished their trades, and no longer manufactured the fine wools of Andalusia or the silks of Valencia. The ministry, having no more manufactures to tax, next oppressed the farmers, and the imposts laid on agriculture were as injudicious as they were numerous and excessive. “When once a nation,” says Raynal,[f] “has begun to decline, it seldom stops. The loss of population, of manufactures, of trade, and of agriculture, was attended with the greatest evils. While Europe was daily improving in knowledge, and all nations were animated with a spirit of industry, Spain was falling into inaction and barbarism. The duties on commodities, in their transport from one province to another, were so high that they amounted almost to a prohibition, so that the communication was totally interrupted. Even the transmission of money from one district to another was forbidden. In a short time not a vestige of a road was to be seen. Travellers were stopped at the crossing of rivers, where there were neither boats nor bridges. There was not a single canal, and scarcely a navigable river.”.

A Spanish Gentleman, time of Philip II

The pride of the nation had survived its greatness; its animosities had outlived its power of oppression; but though much of animating health and vigour was gone, the outward form was still nearly the same. The strength of Spain was estimated by numbering its provinces and computing the treasures of the Indies; and to the undiscerning eye of the vulgar, Philip VI may have appeared as great a monarch as his grandsire. It was thus that terror, as Schiller[g] expresses it, still brooded over the lion’s forsaken den; and hence, while the provinces of Spain were depopulated and impoverished, many powerful confederations were formed against her, and the humiliation of the house of Austria was the subject of the vows of politicians in all the states of Christendom. And in fact with every disadvantage under which she laboured, and in spite of the rapid depression she had suffered, Spain might still have regained the lofty station she once held in the rank of kingdoms, if, at the succession of Philip IV, a wise and energetic monarch had ascended the throne, or if the reins of government had been intrusted to a prudent and enlightened minister.

The supremacy of Spain over Italy, her own western mines, and the oriental treasures supplied by the Indian empire of Portugal—all these, which had hitherto proved but elements of decay, might, under able administration, have afforded immense resources. The extensive frontiers of the monarchy were still guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. That celebrated infantry which was originally formed on the Swiss model, and had been for more than a century the admiration and terror of Europe, was still unbroken. It was encouraged by the remembrance of a thousand triumphs, without one recollection of shame, for no signal defeat had yet withered the laurels of St. Quentin and Pavia. The soldiery still retained that intrepid and enterprising, though somewhat ferocious and mutinous spirit, by which they were marked in the wars of the Low Countries. Their renowned captain, the noble Spinola, still survived, and many officers must yet have served in the veteran army which had combated against Henry the Great, under the prince of Parma.

But Philip IV, though superior to his father in refinement of taste, and in some specious exterior accomplishments, was equally deficient in vigour of mind or solid acquirements, and was far inferior to his predecessor in purity of life. The minister, on whom for more than twenty years he relied with implicit confidence and devolved the uncontrolled management of affairs, was a man of irregular genius and of vast designs, which were but ill suited to the present condition of his country; and to this policy, which was alternately obstinate and capricious, many have attributed the overwhelming misfortunes of Spain.[k]

PHILIP IV “THE GREAT” (1621-1665 A.D.)

[1621-1622 A.D.]

When the new king ascended the throne he was only in his seventeenth year, and he began, like his father, by surrendering the reins of government to a worthless favourite. This was the count de Olivares, who had been a gentleman of the bedchamber to the prince of Asturias. This haughty minion commenced his career by removing from the ministry his benefactor, the duke of Uceda, and by recalling the valiant Don Pedro Giron, duke of Osuna, from the viceroyalty of Naples. Whoever had ability, or popular fame or favour with the king, was sure to experience his envy, often his deadly persecution. Every servant of the late government was dismissed or imprisoned, to make way for creatures, if possible, more worthless.

It is, however, certain that by revoking many of the profuse grants made by the two preceding sovereigns by dismissing two-thirds of the locusts in office, by enforcing the residence of many señores, by sumptuary regulations, and other measures, he increased the revenues of the crown. But these reforms were but temporary; the minister was too corrupt to persevere in any line of public advantage; his object was his own emolument, and that of his creatures. How little Spain could flourish under such princes and such administrations may be readily conjectured. In its internal affairs, there was the same gradual decline of agriculture, of commerce, of the mechanical arts, and, consequently, of the national resources; yet, while the mass of the people were thus sinking into hopeless poverty, the court exhibited more splendour than ever. Thus, the reception of Charles, prince of Wales, and of his tutor, the duke of Buckingham,—who, with the view of obtaining the hand of the infanta Maria, sister of the king, had been romantic enough to visit Madrid in disguise,—is a favourite subject of historic description. The English reader need not be told that this prodigal expenditure was thrown away, and that Charles, ultimately, obtained a French princess. Still more expensive were the festivities consequent on the election of the king of Hungary—who had married the infanta Maria, sister of Philip—to be king of the Romans, and, consequently, heir to the imperial crown. If to these fooleries we add the money sent out of the kingdom to assist the German emperor in the wars with Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, we shall not be surprised that the whole nation beheld the conduct of Philip and his minister with discontent. While tens of thousands were famishing, from the stagnation of the usual branches of industry—while plays, pantomimes, entertainments, and other frivolities of the most costly description were succeeding each other in the capital, in contempt of so much misery—it required no ordinary stock of patience to witness the disgraceful contrast. Murmurs and complaints were treated with contempt, until the Catalans openly opposed the flagitious minister and the royal puppet.

THE CATALAN INSURRECTION

[1621-1641 A.D.]

The profligate extravagances of the court were not the only cause which led to the Catalan insurrection. At the close of a war with France—a war of which mention will hereafter be made—the Castilian troops, in the fear that hostilities would be recommenced by the enemy, were stationed on the northern frontier, at the expense of the inhabitants, on whom they were billeted. This regulation was as unjust as it was arbitrary, and even odious. The people remonstrated. When the soldiers resisted, lives were lost on both sides. The ringleaders were imprisoned or fined; to release them formidable bands of countrymen hastened to Barcelona, the residence of the viceroy, with the crucifix borne before them, burst open the prisons, committed many excesses throughout the city, ill-treated the royal officers, and ultimately killed the viceroy himself as he was endeavouring to escape by sea.[93] From these scenes, and from the universal hostility of the Catalans to his violent regulations, Olivares might have learned something useful; but he was incapable of profiting by the lessons of experience. The marquis de los Velez was sent with an army to reduce the rebels to obedience. They implored the aid of the French king. That aid was readily promised, but as it did not immediately arrive, the whole principality, except the city of Tortosa, armed.

This was not all: contending that the king, by violating their ancient privileges, had broken his compact with them, and consequently forfeited all claim to their obedience, they proclaimed a republic. But as the marquis had quickly reduced several important fortresses, and was advancing, breathing revenge on the capital, the new republic was soon destroyed by its authors, and Louis XIII proclaimed count of Barcelona. The French monarch had accepted the dignity, even on conditions—such was the jealous spirit of Catalan freedom—which left him the bare protection of the province, which excluded him from the slightest influence in it, and which in fact transformed it into a republic under the name of a sovereign. Not that he intended to observe those conditions, for it is admitted even by the national writers that with his characteristic duplicity—duplicity to which he was urged by his ambassador Argenton—he had resolved to annul them the first favourable opportunity. After this treaty five thousand French soldiers passed the Pyrenees; Tarragona, which now held for the king, and in which all the royal forces were concentrated, was invested, but after a time relieved; Castilian reinforcements arrived to make head against the enemy; near twelve thousand French came to assist their countrymen, and Louis himself advanced to the frontiers of Roussillon to direct their operations. At this moment, Philip intended to conduct the war in person, and he actually left Madrid for the purpose at the head of a considerable force; but at Aranjuez he halted, under the pretext of waiting the arrival of Olivares, who was in no hurry to join him. In fact, neither king nor minister had courage enough to meet the enemy. Meantime the French armies were actively gaining several important advantages: to counterbalance them, Olivares formed a conspiracy in the very heart of France to assassinate the minister Cardinal Richelieu, and even to dethrone Louis; but it was detected, and its prime instrument was beheaded.

[1641-1659 A.D.]

Though a natural death soon called away the cardinal, his successor, Mazarin, who succeeded also to his Macchiavelian principles, continued the war. It lingered for years, with various success, or rather with no decided success, to either part, until the inhabitants themselves grew tired of the French yoke, and joined with their Castilian brethren. Whether this change in the public feeling was owing to the haughtiness of their allies, which is said to have been intolerable, or to the inconsistency of the popular mind, or still more, probably, to both united, fortune at length began to favour the arms of Philip. Still the war with the Netherlands and with the Portuguese, to which allusion will shortly be made, rendered the Spanish court desirous of peace. The wish was shared by Mazarin, whose resources were nearly exhausted by hostilities of so many years’ continuance, and in so many countries. In 1659, the plenipotentiaries of both powers met at St. Jean-de-Luz, and the conditions of peace, after three months’ deliberation, were sanctioned by the respective monarchs.[c]

It may be well here to give a brief review of the larger politics of Spain in Europe during and after the Thirty Years’ War, though fuller details must be looked for in the histories of France and the other countries concerned.[a]

THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR AND THE TREATY OF THE PYRENEES

[1619-1659 A.D.]

The incessant efforts of the Austrian princes to cement the union of their families, and secure the reciprocal succession to their respective dominions, had been no less sedulously opposed by France, than their projects of conquest and aggrandisement. In the pursuit of this object, the address and good fortune of the French repeatedly triumphed over the inveterate hostility of the rival house; and by dexterously availing themselves of times and circumstances, they succeeded in forming frequent marriages between the two families of France and Spain. Philip II espoused Isabella, a princess of France; a double match was also concluded between the infanta Anne, daughter of Philip III, and Louis XIII, and between Isabella, sister of the French monarch, and the prince of Asturias, afterwards Philip IV. To obviate, however, the mischiefs likely to ensue from these occasional aberrations of policy, the Austrian sovereigns endeavoured to guard and fortify their respective pretensions to the family inheritance, by renunciations, compacts, and treaties.

These marriages and arrangements formed only temporary suspensions of hostility. In 1619, the long and eventful contest of the Thirty Years’ War commenced. The Spanish monarchy, already weakened by past disasters, was shaken to its foundations. Exactions rendered necessary by the diminished resources of the government, joined with the abuses inseparable from delegated power, excited civil troubles: the progress of its decline was marked by a rebellion in Catalonia; by the temporary insurrection which rendered Masaniello, a simple fisherman, master of Naples; and by the revolution which placed the family of Braganza on the throne of Portugal. The event of this direct conflict was the degradation of the Austrian house in both its branches, and the partial accomplishment of those extensive designs which France had long meditated against the remnant of the Burgundian inheritance, and even against Spain itself. The Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, opened passages into Germany and Italy, reduced the empire to an aristocracy, and destroyed the union of the Germanic body, by the establishment of a religious and political schism.

But even after the emperor Ferdinand III had been forced to withdraw from the contest, and to submit to the reduction of his power and influence, Philip IV was induced to continue the war, from the consciousness of past greatness, the hope of drawing advantage from the civil discords which arose in France during the minority of Louis XIV, and above all from an unwillingness to give his eldest daughter in marriage to the French monarch, which was exacted as the price of peace. During this interval, he not only resolved to affiance his daughter to the archduke Leopold; but having become a widower, he cemented his connection with the German branch by espousing Maria Anna, daughter of Frederick III. At length, his increasing embarrassments; the loss of Jamaica and Dunkirk, wrested from him by the successful hostility of Cromwell; the birth of a son, Philip Prospero; and another pregnancy of his queen, induced him to accept the proposals of France. Accordingly, preliminaries were signed at Paris, November 7th, 1659, and a treaty of peace was arranged by the two prime ministers of France, Cardinal Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro, in the Isle of Pheasants, a small islet in the river Bidassoa, which divides the two kingdoms.

Costume of a Young Spanish Woman, early Seventeenth Century

[1659-1664 A.D.]

This celebrated act, which has been termed the Treaty of the Pyrenees, sowed the germ of future wars, and produced to France no less important advantages on the side of the peninsula and Flanders, than the Peace of Westphalia had produced to Austria on that of the empire. To France, Spain ceded Roussillon with part of Conflans and Cerdagne, of Flanders and Hainault, and all Artois, except the towns and districts of St. Omer and Aire. The pretensions of France to Navarre were reserved; Dunkirk and Jamaica were yielded to England: and the duke of Lorraine, the last remaining ally of Spain, was reduced to dependence, by dismantling the fortifications of Nancy, and by the compulsory cession of Moyenvic and Bar. Finally, the king of Spain consented to give in marriage his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, to Louis XIV; but under the express condition that she should, for herself and issue, renounce all right to her paternal inheritance. In return, the king of France restored all his conquests in the Netherlands, Italy, and Catalonia, and agreed not to assist the Portuguese. Accordingly, the signature of the treaty was followed by the celebration of the marriage, June 2nd, 1660, before which the infanta renounced for herself and her posterity all right and title to every part of the Spanish dominions in the strongest terms which ingenuity could devise. Her renunciation was afterwards ratified with equal solemnity by Louis XIV, for himself and his heirs, and confirmed by the cortes then assembled at Madrid. The French court, however, made a mockery of such engagements; and the well-known observation of Mazarin to the plenipotentiaries employed in negotiating the treaty shows at once the most shameless perfidy and the ultimate object of this connection: “Let the match be concluded, and no renunciation can prevent the king from pretending to the succession of Spain.”

As little did the French monarch respect his engagements not to interfere in the affairs of Portugal, the hope of which had been one of the principal inducements with Philip to conclude this disadvantageous treaty. On the contrary, the most glaring prevarication was employed to justify the active support afforded to the Portuguese: their resistance was successfully employed to exhaust the remaining strength of the Spanish monarchy, and to prepare the way for that system of aggression and usurpation which was shortly to be exhibited, to the terror and indignation of Europe.[h]

THE BATTLE OF VILLAVICIOSA

[1659-1664 A.D.]

Commensurate with the origin of the Catalan insurrection was that of Portugal. As this is not the proper place to enter into an examination of the causes which produced, or the circumstances which attended that natural burst of freedom, we defer both to the history of Portugal. Here it is sufficient to observe that the discontented Portuguese, despising the royal puppet at Madrid, and burning with an intolerable thirst for the restoration of their independence, proclaimed the duke of Braganza under the name of João IV; and that in several campaigns they nobly vindicated the step. Assisted by their allies the English, Dutch, and French, they continued the war with indomitable valour, and with general success until 1664, when, in the battle of Villaviciosa, they inflicted so severe a blow on the arms of Philip that he precipitately abandoned hostilities. This was one of the causes which led to the disgrace of Olivares. Nothing can better show the uncontrolled power of this minister, and the criminal negligence of every public duty by the king, than the fact that the latter remained long ignorant of the momentous events in Portugal. At length, fearing to conceal them any longer, the count one day observed, with an air of studied carelessness, “The duke of Braganza has run stark mad; he has proclaimed himself king of Portugal! This folly will bring your majesty twelve millions in confiscations!” The only reply was, “We must put an end to the mischief”; but the remonstrances of his queen, and the rebellion of the minister’s nephew, the duke of Medina Sidonia, for whom the minister wrung a reluctant pardon, determined Philip to exile Olivares from the court. This was actually done; but the kingdom experienced no benefit by a change of favourites.[c] “The unmeasured blame usually lavished upon Olivares,” says Hume,[j] “appears hardly just, notwithstanding the disastrous results of his rule. His great sin was that he tried to insist upon all Spaniards making equal sacrifices to pay for the barren pride which all Spaniards shared.”

DEATH OF PHILIP IV (1665 A.D.)

The character of Philip, who died in 1665, needs no description. Though from a few early successes he was called “the great” and “the planet king,” his reign, next to that of Roderic the Goth, was the most disastrous in the annals of Spain. Omitting the distress which it brought on the people, and the horrors of the Catalan insurrection, the loss of Roussillon, Conflans, a part of Cerdagne, Jamaica, much of the Low Countries, and above all Portugal, and his recognition of the independence of the Seven United Provinces, are melancholy monuments of his imbecility. A still worse effect was produced by the frequent reverses of his arms in Italy and the Low Countries,[94] reverses which encouraged the smallest states to set his power at defiance; thus, both in the East Indies, and on the coast of America, his settlements were plundered or seized by Holland. In private life, his conduct was as little entitled to respect: by his mistresses he had six or seven children,[95] of whom the most famous was Don John, surnamed of Austria, believed to be the son of an actress of Madrid, and born in 1629.

On this son the choicest favours of the crown were conferred; he was made prior of St. John, and was several times at the head of the Spanish armies. In Italy, the Netherlands, Catalonia, and Portugal, he showed that he was not unworthy to bear the name of his great predecessor, the son of the emperor Charles; in the last-named country his success would have been more decided, had not the queen, who hated his popularity and envied his fame, diverted the supplies which were intended for him, and left him no other alternative than that of retiring from the service. Hence the foundation of the dissensions which, as we shall perceive in the ensuing reign, distracted the state. Of Philip’s numerous offspring by his two queens, Isabella, daughter of Henry IV of France, and Maria Anna, daughter of the emperor Ferdinand III, three only survived him. Maria Theresa queen of France, Margaret queen of Hungary, and his successor Don Charles.

KING CHARLES II AND THE FRENCH WAR

[1665-1669 A.D.]

If the affairs of this kingdom had been so unfortunate during the reigns of the two Philips, they were not likely to improve under a child who, at his accession, had not attained his fourth year, especially as Don John, the favourite of the nation, was at open hostility with the queen-regent and her confessor the father Nithard [or Nitard], a German Jesuit. This churchman is represented as haughty to the nobles, supple to the queen, and in his general conduct corrupt; but as the representation comes from men always jealous of foreigners, it must be received with caution. An unbiassed mind will easily perceive that his chief fault was the unbounded power he exercised through the queen. The disasters which befell her administration added to the popular discontent.

Though the perfidious Louis XIV had disclaimed, both for himself and his successors, all title to the Spanish possessions, one of his first acts, after his marriage, was to assert, in right of his queen, a monstrous pretension to the Low Countries. In an obscure district of a remote province there was an ancient custom, called devolution, now virtually abrogated by time, that even a daughter of the first wife should inherit in preference to a son by the second: hence, as Maria Theresa, the consort of Louis, was sprung from the first, and Don Charles from the second marriage of Philip, the French monarch poured his legions over the frontier, and with great rapidity reduced most of the fortresses from the Channel to the Schelde. At his instigation the Portuguese made an irruption into Estremadura. The union of Sweden, Holland, and England, to oppose the ambition of the Frenchman, saved the whole Netherlands from subjugation; but, by the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, May 2nd, 1668, he retained the most valuable of his conquests; and by that very union, which thus saved a portion of her northern possessions, Spain was compelled to acknowledge the independence of Portugal.

Of these disastrous circumstances advantage was taken by Don John of Austria, who had been exiled from the court, to load both the queen and her confessor, now a counsellor of state, with increased obloquy. During the flagitious career of the French, the voice of the Spaniards proclaimed him as the only man fit to support the sinking fortunes of the monarchy: to remove him from their attachment, and from his own intrigues, he had been nominated governor of the Low Countries. He refused the dignity. Being retired to Consuegra, a conspiracy was formed or pretended against the life of Nithard, and revealed by one of the accomplices, who asserted that its hidden spring was John.

Whether this conspiracy was, as most men suspected, a stratagem of the queen and her party, or a really meditated deed of blood, it enabled the regent to act with more vigour: she despatched a strong party of cavalry to arrest John, and consign him to the Alcazar of Toledo. He fled into Aragon; and from his refuge assumed a higher tone, insisting that satisfaction should be made him for a suspicion so injurious to his honour, and that the Jesuit should be banished from the kingdom. With seven hundred resolute followers, he advanced towards Madrid. He was met by the papal nuncio, who had been charged with the honourable duty of mediation. To the request that he would remain four days at Torrejon until his demands were satisfied, he replied that Nithard must leave the kingdom without delay. The insolence of this mandate—for such it was—exasperated the queen; but she was constrained to comply with it, and the Jesuit was dismissed.

Father Nithard was certainly a disinterested, he appears to have been a well-meaning man. He would accept no money (a moderate sum excepted, necessary to defray the expense of his journey to Rome), asserting with an honest pride that he entered Spain a poor priest, and a poor priest would leave it: however, he was subsequently raised to the dignity of cardinal.

[1669-1677 A.D.]

Don John renewed his intrigues, artfully uniting the cause of the people with his own, and at length compelling the court to invest him with the government of Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Isles, and Sardinia. The following years he passed in sovereign state at Saragossa, silently watching the course of events which, as he had anticipated, were of the same adverse character to the nation. France, true to her career of spoliation in all ages, in 1672 invaded Holland, now the ally of Spain, with one hundred thousand men: to such a host resistance was vain, and most of the country was seized by the invaders.

Spain, like England, Germany, and other states who confederated to arrest the daring progress of Louis, flew to the assistance of her prostrate ally, and immediately afterwards declared war against France. As usual, the advantage turned in favour of the stronger party. In Burgundy, Franche-Comté, which Spain had inherited in right of the ancient dukes of that province, was conquered, and some destructive inroads were made into Catalonia; the few fortresses remaining to the Spanish monarch in the Low Countries were threatened, one or two actually reduced; and Messina in Sicily was instigated by the enemy to rebel. In three years the rebellion subsided of itself, the inhabitants of Messina being glad to escape from the yoke of Louis by returning to their obedience. In 1675 Don John was ordered to pass over to that island; but as the royal majority was at hand when the regent’s term of authority would expire, he hoped that he should be called to the ministry; a result for which his friends were actively disposing the king. But through the arts of the queen, Maria Anna, he was suddenly ordered to leave Madrid. There can be no doubt, however, that his own presumption hastened this disgrace, for he had insisted on being acknowledged as infante of Castile, and consequently as collateral heir to the monarchy. The queen triumphed the more as her son was as imbecile in mind as he was sickly in body, and as with her alone would continue the affairs of administration.

A new, and, if scandal is to be believed, a less innocent favourite than Father Nithard, was found in Ferdinand de Valenzuela, who had been page of the duke del Infantado, and who to specious manners and some knowledge added an agreeable person. But the queen’s triumph was transient: the creatures of Don John became more numerous and clamorous. The leading grandees, who detested the new favourite for his vanity, and still more for his meanness of birth, joined in the cry. The torrent became too strong to be stemmed even by her. She resolved to derive merit from necessity; for knowing that Don John was preparing to leave Saragossa for Madrid, she not only suffered her son to command his immediate presence, but she herself wrote in the same strain. At his approach Charles II retired to another palace, ordering his mother not to leave the one she inhabited; and despatched the archbishop of Toledo to Hita to welcome his brother. The power of John was now unbounded, while Maria Anna, notwithstanding her efforts to recover the royal favour, was circumscribed to her own household. John was affectionately received by the king, and was declared prime minister. The first decree which he signed was for the arrest of Valenzuela, now degraded from the class of nobles to which the favour of Maria Anna had unworthily raised him. He was conveyed to the castle of Consuegra, forced to disgorge his ill-gotten wealth, and banished to the Philippine Islands. He died in Mexico.

[1677-1679 A.D.]

The administration of Don John was no less deplorable than that of the regent whom he had so criminally supplanted. Occupied in the cares of vengeance, or in providing for his creatures, he feebly opposed the victorious progress of Louis. Valenciennes, Cambray, St. Omer, and other places were speedily reduced: Ypres and Ghent were assailed with equal success; and Puycerda, on the Catalan frontier, yielded about the same time to another French army. Most of these places, however, were restored at the Peace of Nimeguen, September, 1678, of which the most unpopular condition was that Charles should receive the hand of the princess Marie Louise, niece of the French king. That nation had always been regarded with jealousy, it was now hated by the Spaniards. John did not live to witness the solemnisation of the nuptials. The ill success of his government, his haughty behaviour towards the grandees, his persecution of such as belonged rather to their country than to his party, and his tyranny even over the king, rendered him not merely unpopular, but odious. In this state mental anxiety put an end to his life (September 17th, 1679) at the moment his enemies were preparing to hasten his downfall.[96] The queen-dowager returned to court, not indeed to resume her ancient influence, but to assist in the multiplication of intrigues, and, consequently, the perplexities of her imbecile son.[c]

THE FATE OF THE YOUNG QUEEN

[1679-1691 A.D.]

Marriage had come to be one of the political resources of Louis XIV. Another matrimonial alliance, still more important, had been concluded a few months previously. It has been said that Don John of Austria, the uncle and minister of the king of Spain, hoped to find in France a support against his rival, the king’s mother, who was upheld by the court at Vienna. Don John had caused the negotiations undertaken by the queen-mother for uniting the Catholic king with a daughter of the emperor to be broken off, and had solicited for Charles II the hand of Marie Louise of Orléans, a niece of Louis XIV and daughter of the duke of Orléans by his first wife Henrietta of England. It can be imagined with what eagerness this proposition was received, since it was supposed that it would establish the diplomatic preponderance of France at Madrid.

A Spaniard of the Seventeenth Century

The contract was signed on the 30th of August, 1679, to the great joy of Louis XIV, but to the still greater sorrow of the bride. It was only with despair that the poor young girl left the paradise of Versailles to bury herself in the tomb of the Escorial, at the side of that strange husband who was only the shadow of a king, only the shadow of a man. For a whole month she saddened the court and wounded the national susceptibilities of the Spanish ambassadors by the violence of her grief. She seemed to have a presentiment of her sad fate. She had not yet started when the protector she was to meet on the other side of the mountains expired and her natural enemy the queen-mother seized again from the dying hands of Don John the power she had lost. Marie Louise found on foreign soil only long hours of weariness, and implacable persecutions which were terminated by a prolonged agony and perhaps by a crime. She was one of the most pathetic victims of the cruel policy of dynasties. The sacrifice, however, was useless; the young queen acquired no influence at Madrid and, the anti-French policy having gotten the upper hand together with the queen-mother, by the intervention of the prince of Orange, a rapprochement was brought about between Spain and England, the effects of which Louis XIV fought with greater success at Windsor than at the Escorial.[l]

Dunlop[k] gives many details of the journey of the young bride to her imbecile husband. To the natural homesickness so peculiarly characteristic of the French, she added a complete ignorance of the Spanish language and a nature rebellious to the unusual formality of Spanish court etiquette. The royal bridegroom into whose arms she was driven was, as a result of the Austrian marriages, not only weak-minded but also repulsive physically; his chin was so huge that he could not masticate and his tongue so large that his speech could hardly be understood. He was treated as a baby till he was ten and was almost illiterate; his amusements were those of a lascivious boy and he died in the decay of old age when he was not yet forty.

An incident of Charles II’s reign was the renewal of the inquisitional fury, and one of the fêtes of the young queen was the privilege of watching fifty wretches led out to torture and execution; one beautiful Jewess appealed to the queen who was helpless to save her.

The queen was very charitable and yet was left on a stinted allowance irregularly paid. Her reputation suffered slander—as what queen’s has not?—and Hume[j] calls her a pagan; but Dunlop says that her character was untainted. She found congenial friends naturally among the people of her own country, but these were eventually forbidden her presence. Sunny as her nature was, it is small wonder that she pined and did not make headway against the thick plots against her. She died in February, 1689—of cholera morbus it was claimed, though poison was of course alleged.

Dunlop[k] well says, “Of all political queens, the fate of Louise d’Orléans is perhaps the most to be pitied.” Her life had been vain; she had not satisfied her uncle Louis XIV by fastening French influence on the court; she had not satisfied Spanish hopes by bearing an heir to the monstrosity she had been forced to wed; and she had not even been happy.[a]

LAST YEARS OF CHARLES II

[1691-1700 A.D.]

Omitting the detail of obscure wars—obscure at least to the Spaniards—which almost uniformly turned to their prejudice, on the death of Marie Louise, in 1689, the French monarch again poured the storm of war over the frontier of Catalonia. What most heightened his resentment was the immediate marriage of the widowed Charles with a princess of the house of Austria; to that house he had always been a mortal enemy, and he feared lest the king, who was hitherto childless, should at length have an heir. For some time, indeed, the efforts of the invaders, owing to their insignificant numbers, were often repulsed, or neutralised by subsequent reverses; but, in 1691, Urgel was taken by the duke of Noailles; Barcelona and Alicante were severely bombarded by sea. Two years afterwards Palemos and Rosas capitulated; the following year the Spaniards were defeated in a considerable battle; the victors took Gerona; Hostalric, and other places, followed the example, and Barcelona itself was threatened. Destitute of money and of troops, the efforts of the cabinet to raise both were but partially successful, and the time which should have been spent in vigorous hostilities was thus wasted in almost useless preparation. After a short suspension of hostilities, Barcelona fell into the power of Vendôme.

Spain trembled to her most distant extremities; and she could scarcely believe in the reality of her good fortune when, at the Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, Louis restored all his conquests. She was too much confounded by this display of magnanimity to divine the cause; yet that cause was not insufficient. From his niece, Marie Louise, the French monarch had learned to suspect the impotency of Charles; the sterility of the recent marriage confirmed the suspicion; and as he aspired in consequence to place a prince of his family on the throne of Castile, he did not wish to diminish the value of the inheritance by its dismemberment.

In 1698 the health of Charles, which had always been indifferent, began so visibly to decline that all hope of issue was abandoned. On his demise three chief claimants could aspire to his throne: first, the dauphin of France, as the eldest son of Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of Philip IV; secondly, the emperor Leopold, who not only descended from Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, but whose mother was the daughter of Philip III; thirdly, the electoral prince of Bavaria, whose mother was the only daughter of the infanta Margarita, a young daughter of Philip IV. Of these claims, that of the dauphin was evidently the strongest, since his mother was the eldest sister of Charles. It is true that she had renounced for her issue all claim to the crown of Spain; but this renunciation had been demanded by the Spaniards, from a fear lest the two crowns should fall on the same brow. To such a union Europe would never have consented; and the objection was almost equally strong to the union of Spain with Germany. Hence the hostility to the pretensions both of the dauphin, as heir of the French monarchy, and of the emperor Leopold. Hence, too, the celebrated, and infamous as celebrated, treaty of partition, which, in October, 1698, was signed at the Hague by the plenipotentiaries of England, Holland, and France. By it Naples and Sicily, with Guipuzcoa, San Sebastian, and Fuenterrabia were ceded to the dauphin; Spain and the Indies to the Prince of Bavaria; while, for the third party, Charles, second son of Leopold, and the representative of his rights, Milan only was reserved. The death of the Bavarian prince destroyed this beautiful scheme of spoliation; but its authors did not long delay in framing another, which gave Spain, the Indies, and Netherlands to Charles, and which amplified the original portion of the dauphin.

But Louis XIV had no intention to renounce the splendid inheritance; if he could not procure it for the dauphin, or, which would ultimately be the same, for the eldest son of the dauphin, there was a second son, Philip, duke of Anjou, who would be less the object of jealousy to the European powers. With the same view, Leopold was willing that his own rights, and those of his eldest son, should devolve on the archduke Charles the youngest. Both princes sent their emissaries to the court of Charles II, to besiege his sick-bed, and to procure a testamentary declaration in favour of their respective pretensions. The intrigues which continued for so many months to distract the court and kingdom, to embitter rival animosity, and to disturb the last hours of the king, are too endless to be detailed.

The duke of Anjou’s ablest support was Cardinal Portocarrero, archbishop of Toledo. The cardinal terrified Charles’ conscience by a representation of the civil wars which must inevitably follow the uncertainty of succession, and, above all, by frightening him with the responsibility of the consequent bloodshed. On a mind so religious as the king’s, these representations made a deep effect; he observed that, however near the ties of blood, his salvation was still nearer; and after a long, a bitter struggle, he signed the testament which called the duke d’Anjou to the undivided sovereignty of the Spanish dominions. As he subscribed the momentous instrument, his heart still clung to his family, the tears ran from his eyes, while, with a faltering voice, he sorrowfully exclaimed, “God is the disposer of kingdoms!”

Before the signature of this important act, the health and strength of the king had visibly declined; in fact he exhibited in himself a mere shadow of existence. His deplorable, and as it appeared, extraordinary state, one alike of pain, of mental vacuity, and even of half consciousness, gave rise to a report that he was bewitched. He prepared for his end; appointed a council of regency, headed by Cardinal Portocarrero, until the duke of d’Anjou should arrive in Spain; and on the morning of November 1st, 1700, bade adieu to his worldly sorrows, after one of the most disastrous reigns on record.[c]

THE DISTRESSES OF SPAIN

[1665-1700 A.D.]

Thus, at length, terminated the long but inglorious sway of Charles II, in the thirty-ninth year of his age, and the thirty-sixth of his unfortunate reign. His character is written in the events of his clouded life. He was mild and conscientious; suspicious and distrustful from diffidence in his own powers and talents; timid, inconstant, and irresolute, from the influence of hypochondriac affections; chaste from temperament; ignorant from total want of instruction; superstitious from habit and education; he was utterly destitute of discernment, energy, or skill; he was but a ghost even of his grandsire Philip III, and in his premature decay formed no unfit emblem of the declining kingdom over which he reigned.

Charles, indeed, was not wholly responsible for the state of degradation to which Spain was reduced when he closed his fatal career. The administrations of Lerma and Olivares had prepared the way for a long train of losses, humiliations, and disasters; but the wavering and fluctuating counsels of Charles completed the ruin of his country. Spain, which contained twenty millions of inhabitants in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, had only eight millions at the close of the reign of Charles II. Moncada, an author of the beginning of the seventeenth century, estimated the population of its capital at 400,000; and Uztariz, who wrote immediately after the accession of the Bourbons, calculated it at only 180,000, so that it may be rated that it had diminished by one-half during the reigns of Philip IV and his son. Except, indeed, from courtesy and custom, and the extreme interest excited by the question of the succession, Spain, at the end of the reign of Charles, would scarcely have been reckoned among the powers of Europe.

Her finances were in a state of most frightful disorder. The revenues of the crown were absorbed by those agents or farmers, on whom the urgent necessities of government reduced it to depend for supplies; and, at the same time, the people, both in the capital and provinces, were loaded with every species of extortion and monopoly. The ample treasures of the New World were still worse administered; the viceroys, after defrauding the crown and oppressing the subject, were suffered to return from their governments and to enjoy, with impunity, the produce of peculation. The harbours of Spain contained but ten or twelve rotten frigates; the arsenals for the navy were neglected, and even the art of shipbuilding had fallen into oblivion. Her army amounted to not more than twenty thousand men, without discipline, pay, or clothing. Her forts and citadels had crumbled into ruins. Even the breaches made into the walls of Barcelona during the Catalan insurrection continued open, and at the other chief fortresses there were neither guns mounted nor garrisons maintained. Such was the want of vigour in the laws, and remissness in the officers of justice, that reins had been given to every species of licentiousness. The slightest rise in the price of provisions excited tumult and alarm. Madrid had become the rendezvous of robbers and the asylum of assassins, who haunted even the palaces of the grandees or the churches, unmolested and unpunished. Its squares and streets were filled with discarded domestics and famishing artisans, without occupation or the means of subsistence. Those establishments destined to maintain the respect due to royalty had sunk into empty form, and were insufficient to protect the king from mortifying insults, both to his authority and person. The responsible ministry were without intelligence or skill in the science of government: the real influence was in the officers of the household—the king’s confessor, the prelates, and the inquisitors of the realm. The private and bitter jealousies of the grandees, the enmity of the provinces towards each other, and the rigid adherence to ancient forms and usages, however inapplicable to modern circumstances, all conspired to prevent a cordial co-operation in any useful or national object, and completed, in the last year of the seventeenth century and at the end of the Austrian dynasty, the picture of Spain.

Yet the sway, no doubt, of the imbecile Charles may have appeared more feeble from the contrast it presented to the energy and skill of the other governments of Europe, which, at the close of this century, were ruled by the ablest monarchs who had ever appeared, at one era, since the first rise of its states on the wreck of the Western Empire. The energies both of Holland and England were wielded by William III; Louis XIV reigned in France, the prudent Pedro in Portugal, John Sobieski in Poland, Charles XII in Sweden, and in Muscovy Peter the Great—the immortal czar.[k]

FOOTNOTES

[93] [Catalan writers, witnesses of these scenes, describe with enthusiasm the patriotic ardour shown by all classes in the town, the courage, daring, and diligence displayed even by women and children in bringing provisions, ropes, ammunition, medicine, and all kinds of assistance to the defenders on the walls, those who had nothing themselves going to the houses and through the streets asking for help. Even the nuns in their convents sent biscuits and preserves, while others prayed to God for the triumph of the Catalan cause; some women dressed as soldiers and went about with swords and daggers.[b]]

[94] The troubles in Naples included the famous insurrection led by the fisherman Masaniello.

[95] According to the Venetian ambassador Zanetornato[i] he had thirty-two illegitimate children.

[96] [Hume[j] says he died of fever and ague, though poison was of course hinted and Maria Anna blamed.]